By Nolan Epstein
Fair Grove, MO – The good news for Ash Grove on Friday night was that senior star Mallory Keith put together another outstanding effort by scoring a game-high 35 points.
The bad news? Not much noise was made by anybody else on head coach Austin Houp’s roster as homestanding Fair Grove (8-4) ultimately broke through for a 56-50 win over the Lady Pirates (7-5) to open 2017.
“Mallory Keith is a great player,” Fair Grove coach Jenny Talbert said following the victory. “It took pretty much all five of us to hold her to 35 points.”
Despite Keith’s impressive night of work, it was the Lady Eagles who had the last laugh – thanks in large part to the sophomore duo of Harley Maxwell and Alana Findley, who combined to score 35 points of their own to help steal the win.
“We work really well off of each other,” Maxwell said of her and Findley. “We’ve played with each other since we were younger, so we always try to look for each other if we can’t score.”
After the end of the first quarter saw a 12-9 lead for visiting Ash Grove, the Lady Eagles scored the first 13 points of the second period to claim a 22-12 edge midway through the segment.
With another charge led by Findley and Maxwell, Fair Grove eventually built its lead to 14 at the third quarter’s 3:42 mark, but Ash Grove’s late-game resiliency and the All-Conference talent of Keith helped bring back the Lady Pirates to within 48-46 with 3:39 remaining in the contest.
Enter Maxwell one more time – who scored eight of her 16 points in the final minutes to spell the difference and hold down Ash Grove’s comeback bid just enough.
“We’re a young team and a lot of times when we’ve had those close games, we kind of get back on our heels,” Talbert said. “I thought we finished well. We got the ball inbounds, we were able to stall a little bit and we hit some free throws which is always nice to see.”
All of the 6-foot-2 sophomore’s success came in the paint as she scored nearly at will under the basket and severely limited the Lady Pirates’ offensive success inside.
“In this game, we thought we would have a pretty good advantage in the post,” said Talbert. “That’s kind of what we worked on all week. Harley was going to have to get open on the block and she was going to have to finish. I thought she really did a good job of posting hard, posting deep and finishing inside.”
It certainly wasn’t the result that Coach Houp wanted, but he was pleased to see the strong defensive effort from his team provide a spark in the second half.
“Mallory [Keith] is normally going to get her points,” Houp said. “She plays her butt off, but it was the rebounding and the defense from the other girls that really made a difference and helped us to be within six points of a very good Fair Grove team.”
Fair Grove is right back on the hardwood on Saturday as it takes on Osceola in the first round of the Skyline Tournament. Ash Grove travels to Miller on Monday.
Box Score
Ash Grove – 12 11 13 14 – 50
Fair Grove – 9 19 12 16 – 56
Ash Grove – Mallory Keith 35, Catie Martin 9, Stefanie Duncan 2, Patsy Gorski 2, Kennedi Climer 2
Fair Grove – Alana Findley 19, Harley Maxwell 16, Lexie Sutherland 7, Taylor Bell 7, Lorin Weaver 4, Cydney Fullerton 3
